


With a Key and a Kite

by wobblyheadeddollcaper



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Canon Era, Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:51:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5122268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wobblyheadeddollcaper/pseuds/wobblyheadeddollcaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander Hamilton: bastard, founding father of the USA, projection empath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It starts in the hurricane, when Alexander is seventeen years old and scared out of his mind. The boarding-house where he stays has a cellar, and he and a few others had hidden down there, listening to the wind rage. After the wind quiets, they realise that something has fallen against the door, trapping them inside. The sheer panic pushes out of him like a wave. He hears a hoarse scream outside, and a pounding on the door.

“Help!” he cries out. “We’re in here, help!” His rescuers’ hands are bleeding when they drag him out, his own urgency infecting them. He wills himself to calm down.

*

It starts at Princeton, when Aaron is fifteen and in a tutorial with Professor Martin, a noted mindreader. Martin asks him to think about the history of Rome, and frown when he does.

“Again.”

Aaron thinks about Cicero, about a man writing so well that it becomes a shield against any attack save a sword.

“Well, it looks like we should send you to a talent master, young Mr Burr – that’s quite a shield you’ve thrown up against me. You will have to tell me about the history of Rome instead.”

Aaron is unaware of having thrown up any shield, but he holds his tongue. The talent master tells him he’s not only immune to telepathy, but to everything else created by the powers of man.

*

It starts when Angelica is ten, and Eliza offers her a doll - but she knows, suddenly, that Eliza would rather keep the doll, and only offers it because Eliza assumes that her favourite doll must also be Angelica’s favourite.

“Keep it, Liza! I want the one in the blue dress.” It happens to be true, and it makes Eliza so happy.

*

It starts when Eliza is three and everyone in the household comes down with scarlet fever except her. Her bruises from childhood tumbles and corporal chastisement are quick to fade, gone in hours instead of days. When she is older she becomes the family nurse, and sometimes ministers to the sick and poor as a charitable lady should. No infection touches her, even when she breathes the air in a house with influenza or drinks at a house with cholera.


	2. Chapter 2

Alexander comes to New York, where he spends a great deal of effort controlling his power. He learns through bitter practice to accept charity with some degree of grace, but to court favour is one thing, to enforce it quite another.

He meets Aaron Burr and projects the liking he has for him, the desire for approval, before he can control himself. It bounces off Burr, who doesn’t appear to have noticed anything. When he learns about Burr’s power he finds himself hanging around the man just to test his limits. This is how he learns that his writing is capable of persuading Burr where his power isn’t, and some inquiry and research confirms his suspicions.

When he writes, he persuades only with his words and not his power, and that gives him a licence he does not have in speech.

He writes, and speaks with increasing confidence. He learns that when he speaks with his power behind his conviction, he can only make others feel the emotion of conviction – and if they are already decided against him, this hardens their opposition.

He takes rooms with the tailor Hercules Mulligan, who teaches him the rudiments of shielding. It’s a social necessity in large cities, and Alexander finds that he can adapt the technique to his own power most effectively. He makes friends, and in their discussions of philosophy and politics and history he learns that the number of people with powers has been growing, till almost half the colonies has some gift or other. In Europe it’s only a quarter or so.

“It’s a sign, then,” Hercules Mulligan says. “It’s the age of revolution, the age of evolution. Maybe Nature gives us these powers because we will need them.”

“If power was a gift for those in extremity, suffering slaves would be free and aristocrats ungifted. It is distributed as all mankind’s traits are, by inheritance and chance,” Laurens argues.

“It’s what one does with power that counts,” Alexander says, veering off at a tangent. “It’s like the strength of the mind or the body – without application, it withers to uselessness. So with the power of the state to defend its citizens – if state power is unused, or used against citizens, it becomes useless to the citizens it should be defending.” Alexander has his shields up, not projecting anything, but the mood on the streets still matches that in his blood, a wild ferment of rebellion.

The use of powers in war is a hotly debated topic. Some hold it to be dishonourable against an unpowered enemy. Alexander doesn’t remember the debates when the British invade, when he and Mulligan and a handful of others pelt down the streets towards the cannons. He just takes his fear, his dread, everything he’s shielded from the others- takes it and throws it at the cannon’s crew, dousing them in panic till they fall back gasping and confused. They are killed seconds later. Mulligan spikes the gun and claps him on the shoulder.

“Can you do that again, Captain Hamilton?”

“I think so.”

*

Lafayette and Washington are formidable. They both have the power to see into the future, and this coincidence alone could have made them friends, since the burdens of the gift are hard to understand for those who don’t have it. But they are also both leaders, capable of inspiring their volunteer army to heights beyond imagining.

“We can’t rely on foresight, even with two seers in command,” Washington says, leaning over the map. “The gift is damnably unreliable, as Greek myth teaches us.”

“But it can be enough to shift the balance – though less useful at this time than another hundred guns would be,” Lafayette says, shrugging his agreement.

Alexander learns over time that their gifts are different. Lafayette sees scant minutes into the future, but clearly, while Washington receives only vague impressions from weeks or months to come. Putting their gifts together with the American network of spies and informers among the British, the revolutionary army command can give the distant impression of omniscience.

“I saw further only once, when I was young and new in my power,” Lafayette says one night, late in a night of drinking.

“Oh?”

“Mm.” Alexander almost thinks Lafayette has stopped, but he goes on after a minute. “It was very far in the future. I saw... I saw how it would end, the monarchy. I saw what it would become.” He drinks again. “I saw a reason for revolution.”

“What was it?”

“Swear not to tell, Hamilton. On your honour.”

“I swear.”

Lafayette stares into his drink, and doesn’t reply. Alexander doesn’t press for more. He’s got enough reasons for revolution, and in myth and legend glimpses of the future against the advice of a seer are always attended by ill luck.


	3. Chapter 3

Angelica looks at him like she can see down to his bones, and he feels the feather-light touch of another mind on his. It’s almost unnoticeable, unless you have had the training in espionage that comes with working in military intelligence.

“You will never be satisfied with such a small touch,” he says teasingly.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she says smoothly.

“I can shield what I need to,” he says, running through the drill Hercules had taught him to throw up a wall in his mind. “You can look more closely.” He leans in, smiles, kisses her hand as if he hadn’t just offered such intimacy at a public ball.

She does look, and she’s stronger than he had realised, pulling out memories of his childhood – he flushes with embarrassment – his education, his ambitions. He releases a little of his power through his guards, letting her feel the flame of his attraction, how her touch on his mind has him thinking of more conventional intimacies. She blushes a little.

“Conventional,” she says, recovering enough to tease him. “I have been admired for my looks before. I would have thought you could value a woman for her mind.”

“You would be an excellent agent against the British,” Alexander says. “I would have thought you could value a man for his wits rather than his past.”

“What’s past is mere prologue, especially in our nascent country,” she returns, glancing over his shoulder. “Given my knowledge of you, will you let me change your life?”

“Lead the way,” he says.

“A pleasure to meet you,” says Elizabeth Schuyler, and Alexander didn’t advance to where he is without being able to take a hint.

*

When Alexander meets Eliza he’s attracted to her, but he’s attracted to many people. She has fine dark eyes, a sweet smile, and family money. He’s not immune to any of those charms, nor to the charm of Angelica’s sparkling wit, nor to a hundred other beauties. He keeps a tight hold on his power. His control was hard-won. In his first few months in New York his hunger or his loneliness could pass through a city street like wildfire. He knows that using his power to attract a woman would be dishonourable, and to his pride it has always been unnecessary.

He writes to Eliza after the ball, and she to him. He tells her about his power, teasing her that since it does not work over letter they can be sure that her affection is not a mere mirror of his ‘and if it were a mirror of mine, sweet Betsey, you would write more often to your devoted servant’. She, in return, tells him about her power, and he feels a rush of relief and desire so strong he cannot trace it to a source. He only knows that mere affection is not enough to encompass his emotions any longer. It’s a hasty marriage, although not unusual by the standards of wartime.

Much later, he realises what Angelica must have seen in his mind that first night, lurking beyond his own reach. His mother died in front of him, he saw his cousin’s body after the suicide, he grew up with the slave ships in port and so he knows with wretched intimacy the spectre of disease. To love someone who will be safe, and strong – to love without fear – what a gift he has in Eliza, what a glorious gift. His dear sister-to-be Angelica, too, who saw all that and put them together like a tidy-minded housewife.


	4. Chapter 4

The man who breaks into Washington’s tent stinks of fear-sweat and holds a loaded pistol and a knife.

“Get the general,” he says to Hamilton, who is trapped behind his field-desk, caught in the middle of another French translation.

“No,” Hamilton says reflexively, glancing outside to see that the guard on the tent has collapsed. Hopefully someone will notice soon.

“Washington!” the man calls, and the general steps out from his curtained-off office. The man levels the pistol at his head.

Hamilton doesn’t have time to think, just takes all his fierce instinct for protection, all his love for Washington his _father-commander-teacher-patron_ and shoves it at the assassin, who gasps and drops his pistol.

“I’m so sorry, father,” the man says, and Hamilton steps out from behind his desk, takes two paces and runs the man through.

“How the hell did he get this far?” Washington says, sounding angry. “Hamilton, are you well?”

“Yes, sir.” Hamilton says, though he feels a little faint. “If I may sit down, sir-“

“Sit, sit. Thank you. Pass the word for Colonel Laurens!” he shouts through the doorflap, stepping over the cooling body on the ground. “I thought you were an empath, Hamilton.”

“I am, sir.”

“I wasn’t aware that there was a military use for empathy.”

“Emotional projection, sir. I used it in New York as well.”

“How does it work? Ah Laurens, good – see to the sentry, and rouse a party to search for intruders. Hamilton stopped an assassination attempt. Get some men to dispose of the body, too.”

“Yes, sir,” Laurens says, shooting Hamilton a questioning look as he goes. Hamilton shakes his head – _another time, Laurens_ – and tries to stand. Washington presses him back into his chair.

“What did you do?”

“In New York I was new to war. I, ah, pushed my fear at the enemy.”

“Not this time, though,” Washington says with certainty.

“I have a great deal of admiration for your leadership, sir,” Hamilton says carefully. “I pushed that at him.”

“Ah.” Washington looks at the dead man, considering, and Hamilton concentrates on continuing to breathe normally. “I hope that I will continue to justify such loyalty, Hamilton. You’ve saved my life with it, and I will not forget it.”

Hamilton tells Laurens part of it that night, but leaves out what the assassin said, though it niggles at him at odd moments.

Washington has no children of his own. When he begins to call his aides-de-camp ‘son’, it is a natural extension of their close relationship and their difference in age. But it starts with Hamilton, and it starts shortly after Hamilton kills the assassin.


	5. Chapter 5

Laurens and Hamilton make two sides of a coin, in the years before Laurens is sent south. They share bedrooms and tents and work, they share stories and French vocabulary, they share food when it’s scarce and warmth when it’s cold.

Laurens doesn’t have any powers. It sounds to Hamilton, reading between the lines, that it’s a source of some tension with his father. Henry Laurens, gifted president of the Continental Congress, married a gifted woman and had three ungifted sons. Laurens compensates with an interest in the powers of others – charting their boundaries, unexpected weaknesses, times when they grow or lessen. He is first to note that Washington’s headaches before battle are stronger when the outcome is less predictable, and devises ways to convince him to ice his head and lie down.

“Have you ever tried to push your emotions at someone you weren’t fighting?” Laurens asks one evening, as they prepare for sleep.

“I spent a lot of time trying not to,” Hamilton replies, surprised.

“I wondered if you could control what you sent better if you practiced. Oh, I know you send what you yourself feel, but no man feels only one thing at a time – you might learn to send only a part forth.”

“Who could I practice on?”

“Well, me, obviously.” Hamilton shakes his head, turning away. Laurens catches his arm. “Come, I already know you, and your sentiments on every subject we’ve ever discussed.”

“I have never been led to believe it’s a pleasant experience for the recipient.”

“You always send, by your own accounts, fear and panic and dread; natural enough against an enemy. Send me something happy.”

“You must tell me to stop if it hurts.”

“Of course I will," Laurens says easily. "Let’s sit down.”

Hamilton looks at Laurens, his untidy curls held back from his freckled forehead, his intent expression, and feels a deep and abiding affection. Tender Laurens, with his firebrand heart and quick mind. He takes a breath and slowly lowers his shield, letting just a glimpse through.

“Oh!” Laurens smiles, his face lightening. “Really? For me?” Hamilton gathers his courage and lowers the shield further, trying to keep back his nervousness. In concentrating on that he feels increased anxiety, and then a memory of General Washington’s tent and the assassin creeps in – the last time he’d used his power intentionally.

“Steady, Alex,” John says, his voice strained. Alexander tries to push his shields back up, he needs to protect John – lovely John, his friend – panic surges again and he slams his shield up, gasping. John is breathing hard too, as if they’ve both been running.

“I like you too,” John says breathlessly. “That sounds foolish – I mean I like you as much as you do me. I – oh hell take it,” he says, walking over to Alexander and embracing him, arms wrapping hard around him. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

Alexander returns the embrace, calming down as his shields settle back into their accustomed place.

“Enough experimenting for one day, I think," he says, a little embarrassed.

“We should try again soon, though,” John says earnestly.

“Are you quite mad?” Alexander asks incredulously.

“Is it strange to say I liked it?” John says tentatively. “It was – don’t laugh at me – it was like being able to read your mind.”

“Why you should want to-“ Alexander says, half laughing.

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be able to read minds, you see.” John looks away. “And I like yours. If you’re tired – tomorrow, perhaps?” Alexander can't help but say yes. That night he runs the memory of John's smile through his mind like silk through his fingers. John Laurens likes Alexander just as much as he likes John. It's a distinct and wonderful feeling.


	6. Chapter 6

Thomas Jefferson has the same talent as Hamilton, or one as close to it as makes little difference. He can send emotions he wants others to feel, where Hamilton can only send out his own. Hamilton is, however, much stronger in his sending, as they find one evening when discussions after a dinner at James Madison’s house grow too heated. Jefferson claims Hamilton lost control first, Hamilton that Jefferson did, but the result is a vicious cycle of emotional feedback. Madison gets the brunt of the anger they release at each other, caught in the crossfire, and with the best will in the world he could never like Hamilton again after that. An opinion formed in the heat of emotion is the most difficult to shift.

Jefferson and Hamilton argue about everything. It would, of course, be wrong to use their powers in political disputes, but neither can avoid suspecting the other of such use, especially on the rare occasions when they find themselves in agreement. Jefferson in his private letters attributes the trade of the state capital for the financial system of Hamilton’s design to underhanded use of Hamilton’s powers. Hamilton tells his allies that Jefferson delights in pushing Hamilton to anger, hoping that he will be too heated to win a debate on merit alone. Letters and remarks are published, fanning the flames of the dispute, and Hamilton curses the gutter press as he sits in the garden of his home and tries to shield himself from Eliza and Phillip.

Thus the first filaments of a mutual distrust strengthen until they form a legendary antipathy.

Washington’s warning against partisanship and political parties comes too late. The Federalists and the Democratic Republicans receive their names not long after his departure.


	7. Chapter 7

When Phillip was born, Alexander prayed on his knees that he would inherit Eliza’s gift, his prayers clumsy with lack of practice. He hoped that all their children would be gifted like her, strong, hale, likely to live a hundred years. He doesn’t get what he prays for.

*

After Phillip’s death Alexander and Eliza retreat like wounded soldiers to the Grange. No political parties, no public events. Alexander practices law from time to time, carefully, shields so tight that a telepathic judge complains that Hamilton gives him a headache with the ferocity of his control.

Alexander had always relied on Eliza’s strength, had relied on being unable to hurt her. Twice over, now, he has had to confront his own stupidity. She had been angry about the Reynolds Pamphlet, her pain a low, dull thing cowering behind her rage. Now she is sad, lost, and it is so much harder to bear.

He finds her in the garden. The other children are in the nursery, Angelica helping the nursemaid care for her younger siblings. The end of the garden, far from the house or from other people, is where he goes when he cannot maintain his shields any longer.

“Eliza,” he starts, then stops, for once at a loss for words. She’s lost weight in her grief, the fine bones of her face more prominent.

“Alexander,” she says remotely, looking at a patch of spring flowers. “Shall I leave you here?”

“No,” he says quickly, and takes her hand. “No, I – I wanted to ask you something. I wanted to – may I open my shields with you?” They had done this often during the first years of marriage, as a means of communication or a previously unsuspected spice to their loving. Alexander had shared his desire for her, reflecting back her beauty, and they had kindled each other into ecstasy. Since the Reynolds pamphlet he has made only one, disastrous attempt to push his emotions on her, trying to make her understand why he had so ruined their lives, and she had understood only too well, driven to tears in her betrayal.

Otherwise he has respected her wishes and let her be. More than anyone now alive, she can clearly distinguish her own emotions from those Alexander projects. She cannot be manipulated by him anymore, only informed.

“Why?”

“I want to show you you’re not alone. I don’t deserve you, I know – I’ve brought you so much pain – but I won’t compound my many errors by abandoning you in your grief.”

Her face lightens underneath the lines of mourning graven into it. “You always think you can fix things.”

“Not fix. You’re not a broken thing to be mended. I want to-“ He cuts himself off, starts again. “Eliza, whatever would ease you, I want to give it. And if nothing would ease you, as nothing seems to ease me, then I want only to be at your side.”

“Open them, then,” she says, sounding resigned, but more present than she was a minute ago.

He tries, finds he cannot. He’s grown so used to having his guard up it’s rusted in place. She frowns at him. He tries to smile at her.

“I – bear with me? I haven’t let them down since…” He can’t remember. Certainly since the funeral, where he’d had to leave the graveside quickly for a solitary copse and had let loose a burst of grief that had brought a nearby stray dog howling and whimpering to his feet.

She takes his hand.

“It’s quiet here. You can show me.”

It’s like opening floodgates _griefloss I’d trade his life for mine sorrowlossElizalove_ and that stubborn determination, now applied solely to _letussurvivethisthechildrenEliza._ Eliza tightens her grip on his hand, gasping. He pushes his shields back up again, a herculean effort.

“Have I-“ he starts, then sees her tears, and gathers her into his arms. “Oh dearest, don’t cry. I’ve made it worse, I’m so sorry, I’m a fool.”

“No,” she sobs onto his shoulder, and it’s a thousand times better than seeing her stoic and frozen. “Don’t leave me here.”

“Never, I promise.” He kisses her hair. “Stay with me.”


	8. Chapter 8

There are ten things you need to know.

Number one: Aaron Burr hears third-hand about a dinner party where Alexander Hamilton, a little drunk, had said “How do I feel about the possibility of President Burr? Words fail me”. Hamilton had then, according to report, let loose his power and released a wave of weary, mocking contempt upon the diners, tinged with enough derisive humour to make them all laugh.

Number two: The gossip came from a man known to associate with James Callander, a common acquaintance of both presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson and noted cuckold James Reynolds.

Number three: When Aaron Burr challenges Alexander Hamilton, via letter, he does not mention the source of the report, nor the alleged dinner party. There is nothing Burr can bear worse than to be laughed at, so much so that he balks at even mentioning being made the butt of a joke. He challenges Hamilton instead on the grounds of general slander and of misuse of his powers.

Number four: Faced with this rather vague accusation, Hamilton freely admits his opinion of Burr, but denies both slander (on the grounds that it’s all true) and misuse of his powers (on the grounds that he is a man of honor, and using one’s powers on someone without consent is generally considered acceptable only in a declared war). Neither of them back down.

Number five: Hamilton tells Eliza nothing. He can barely bring himself to believe that a man as cautious as Aaron Burr challenged him at all, much less that he will fire. Their seconds will negotiate a peace, surely.

Number six: Their seconds do not negotiate a peace.

Number seven: Alexander resolves to fire into the air as they row over the Hudson. He’s become more religious since the death of his son. Murder is a sin. Burr has dined in his house. It’s all so stupid.

Number eight: When Alexander is shot his shields fall. Everyone present feels his shock, his bewilderment, and everyone knows that he meant to fire above Burr’s head, would never have shot Burr. Everyone knows this except Aaron Burr, who remains as immune to Alexander’s power as he was on the day they met.

Number nine: Angelica drops her book and runs to Eliza’s house before the boat is halfway across the Hudson. “He’s been hurt,” she tells Eliza, gasping. “He’s coming home. It’s bad.”

“Stay with me?” Eliza asks, her voice hollow.

“Of course I will. Of course.”

It takes a day for him to die, and by the end everyone in the street knows exactly how he suffered. Little Angelica Hamilton, a natural empath, is never the same again.

Number ten: Eliza, with her power for survival, outlives everyone. She outlives Jefferson and Burr and her own children and grandchildren. She founds schools and teaches history and she travels west and south as the United States expand. In 1900 she is back in New York and campaigning for women’s suffrage. In 1960 she travels to Alabama and shakes the hand of Reverend Dr Martin Luther King. She looks a spry seventy-five, as she has looked for decades now.

In 2001 she makes her first run for political office. She jokes that it took her this long to get enough life experience to feel equal to the task. By this time she has had a couple more husbands, but she kept the Hamilton name. She speaks of him briefly when people ask, keeping her memories of him close, like treasured jewels. Not so many people ask these days.

Alexander Hamilton never becomes president, but his wife does.


	9. Bonus extra scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lovely arrows asked for Laurens' death and I love suffering and causing the suffering of others. Bonus extra scene!

Hamilton doesn’t hear about Laurens’ death for months. He writes him letters, about little Phillip and about the rumblings of a constitutional convention, that will go forever unread. He hears about it third-hand, outside his new law office.

“… poor General Laurens.”

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen?” he asks, and smiles awkwardly as they turn their surprised faces towards him. “I’m a friend of the Laurens family, have you news…?”

“Young John Laurens died a couple of months ago,” one of them says, and there is a moment of shock before everyone on the street cries out, ragged with disbelief and pain. Only Hamilton is quiet, as still as a wax model of a man. He takes hold of himself, digging his nails into his palms and slamming his shields down. The noise stops.

“I’m sorry,” he says, trying to speak steadily. “Sorry. How did it…”

“The British,” one man says, still gasping for air. “What - what did you just do to us?”

“I’m an empath.” Hamilton says, raising his voice so the whole street can hear him. “It was a loss of control, I am very sorry. There won’t be any long-term effects.”

The two gentlemen walk away, seeming quite put-out, and the traffic begins to flow again as Hamilton stands in his doorway and stares at nothing at all.


End file.
